The following is a short story I submitted to a writing competition. The theme was queer joy. It was a joy to write, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. As an aside, it’s a fictionalized account of how we landed on “Mutti” as a title for me with the kiddo. In reality, we landed on that after a number of conversations between my wife and I, and it was in fact her suggestion. Anyway, without more stalling, the short story.
Another Saturday. Another dawn spent defending my wife’s slumber from tiny fingers trying to claw it away. A promise of whipped cream and eggs secured her respite. I glanced over at the kiddo, wondering if today would be the day she’d venture a sip of the potion beneath her mountain of foam.
“Dad… does it bother you?”
“Hmmm? No, I love coming to the diner with you.”
“No, not that… me calling you dad.”
Oh.
“I dunno. I haven’t really thought about it.”
That was true…ish. I hadn’t thought about it. In fact, I’d studiously avoided that thought for years. Four of them, give or take nine months. Hard enough when everyone is celebrating your imminent ordination as father. Harder still with a baby in your arms and a beard on your face.
The intervening years had made it easier. The twin traumas of pregnancy and birth were long behind us. No one asked me about being a dad, they asked her about school. She took center stage in every conversation; I slank off into the background, where it was safe.
That was, unless the two of us were talking.
“Why not? You think about everything.”
It was sweet, you know? When they’re little they think you can lasso the moon for them. There’s no situation you can’t conjure your way out of, no question you can’t answer. You’re invincible.
At least, as far as they know. In that moment I was terrified. Her center stage spotlight was my bare bulb in the interrogation room. How do you even answer that? What asshole tells their kid they don’t want to be their dad?
“I guess because thinking about it bothers me.”
I didn’t get an immediate response, which was concerning. My daughter was never one to leave a silence unfilled. I watched as she stirred the whipped cream around, but not into, her drink. There was the light clinking of metal on ceramic, the dull roar of chatter all around us, and still a deafening silence.
I broke it before she did.
“Is that weird?”
She gazed into the foam, as if it held the answer. “No… there are lots of things I don’t like to think about.”
“Oh? Like what?”
She gripped her mug, brow furrowing, an unbelievably serious pallor washing over her face. She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “Ghosts.”
Have you ever shot coffee out of your nose? It’s unpleasant. Unbelievably so if it’s still hot. It burns the whole time, and I swear to you the coughing and choking last twice as long. Once I recovered, I was greeted by an extremely aggrieved little girl.
“Hey! Ghosts are scary.” The rebuke would have been sobering, but her lisp softened it into something comical. I stifled my giggles to spare myself any further wrath.
“Ghosts are scary. Sorry for laughing; you caught me off guard.” The apology seemed to placate her, and she returned to her coco-kissed-cream as I tended to the check.
A moment later and we were out the door, in the car, and headed home. I settled into the drivers seat, full of eggs and relieved that my capacity for fear was more interesting than what I was afraid of.
Five minutes into the drive home and a small voice drifted up from the back, shattering my relief.
“I think it’s weird to call a girl dad.”
So did I. I always had, and while I’d worked hard not to think about it, I’d known how weird dad had felt from well before she was born.
“Yeah…. it’s… it is weird,” I finally stammered out. I tried another redirection, “You know, I remember teaching you to say dad. I was so excited the first time you said it that I startled you and you cried.”
She was having none of it. She smelled blood in the water and wouldn’t let go. “Why’d you teach me to say dad if you were a girl?”
The faux leather of the wheel creaked as my hands reflexively clenched. My mouth went dry, and my stomach dropped out. I still struggled to describe my situation to myself, and I sure as shit had no clue where to start with a child.
“I dunno. I think because that was what I was supposed to do? I’m not really sure if I knew I was a girl then…”
She didn’t miss a single beat. As confused and tortured as I was with the whole thing, she was not. My daughter had the clarity, innocence, and brashness of youth on her side. She proceeded to wield them like a sword, cutting unceremoniously through my bullshit.
“You’re a girl. You were supposed to teach me to say mama.” Her voice was righteous, indignant even, as if I’d committed some grave sin.
She was right, on both counts. I was supposed to teach her to say mom. I’d known it then, even if I couldn’t say it. I certainly knew it now. There were a million reasons I hadn’t, but only one seemed appropriate to share with her.
“Yeah, but, well, mom is mom, you know?”
She nodded sagely in the rear-view mirror. “Mom is mom.”
There was another long pause as we tooled down the highway towards home. Just as I turned off the main drag and headed towards our subdivision, I heard her voice again, “What about mommy?”
“That’s just mom’s nickname.”
I realized we were in a race. The only way out of this conversation was rushing home to let her wake up mom. I turned into the neighborhood with a distinct sense of urgency.
“What’re those weird words you use to talk to your friend?”
“She’s not my friend; that’s my host mother from when I was an exchange student, and German.”
“Well, she’s a mom. What did you call her?”
Such a simple question, but it was so hard for me to answer. The words were easy, but the feelings weren’t. My mind flashed to the finality of the safety briefing on the plane. How foreign my first foreign country had felt. The shocking isolation of the crowded train that took me to my temporary home.
It wasn’t all bad though. There was the smile of the woman that welcomed me when I got there. The fine line she walked between being a source of comfort and pushing back on me where I needed to grow. She’d been Frau Dieter for all of five minutes, and then Erika for weeks. At some point though, she was just mom.
My vision misted as I parked the car. I lost the race and handed my daughter her prize. I wobbled my way through, “Mutti… it means mama” and some merciful how kept most of the crying from my voice.
“Then mom can be mom, and you can be mutti. I’m gonna go tell her!” Somewhere far away, a seat belt clicked, and flip-flops slapped a cement walkway. I heard the distant voice of a little girl, my little girl, calling for her mom. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I sat there in my own little world and wept. Was I mourning the lost time? Awash in relief? Joy?
Maybe it was all of them. Until a moment ago, being a mom had seemed so hard, so impossibly far away from me. And then suddenly, impossibly, it wasn’t. It was there, in the way that it was always supposed to be.
As I thought about it, maybe it was there in the way it always had been.